Sacrifice

I have thought long and hard about how exactly I want to write this post. I knew I wanted to write about this, but I was never quite sure where to start. Here's to a successful post!

I've seen the sayings,

Now, I know I'm not a spouse, but all the same, this stands out to me. I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it. I don't think I really have it harder than the boy. There's a good chance that military spouses will argue with me, but you see...

I will never be separated from my family for 9+ months because of deployments.


There's a pretty good chance, I will go my entire career without having anybody shoot at me.


I won't be told that I'm missing holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries because of work.


I probably won't miss major milestones in my children's development.


At the same time...

I will be single parenting children.


I will spend sleepless nights worrying about where he is and if he's okay.


I will get to explain why Santa can't bring Daddy home.


I get left with a lot of the emotional aspects of this since I was not given proper training in handling these situations. It's more of a crash course.


Many, many many things can be added to both lists. I would never tell the boy that what I'm doing is harder than what he is doing, because I don't feel that's true. At least not right now, maybe some day in the future I will feel more along those lines, especially when I'm living on a Marine base and he's off somewhere else.

While I have not decided who has it harder (because let's be real, neither is optimal), sacrifice is definitely a big part of everybody's lives in this crazy game called the military. I pray that he never has to make the ultimate sacrifice, but I know that he is prepared to do such a thing if that is where he is lead.

Nobody has it easy. We all have hardships, but we all have celebrations, too. In order to get to those celebrations, we all must sacrifice at some point in time. Sometimes he has to miss a Thanksgiving, and I have to be thankful that, even though he's not with me, he's safe.